The Sandbox

GWOT hot wash, straight from the wire

Welcome to The Sandbox, a forum for service members who have served or are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, returned vets, spouses and caregivers. The Sandbox's focus is not on policy and partisanship (go to our Blowback page for that), but on the unclassified details of deployment -- the everyday, the extraordinary, the wonderful, the messed-up, the absurd. All correspondence is read, and as much as possible is posted, lightly edited. If you know someone who is deployed who might have something to say, please tell them about us. To submit a post click here.

SOME THINGS OF USE |

November 13, 2007

Not everyone has the luxury of being here at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, surrounded by a medically concentrated community such as this. Many Soldiers and their families move rapidly through the system. From med evac in theater, to Germany, then to the hospital, treatment, and before they know it they are separated from service or returned to duty. In some ways this is a positive and in some ways a negative.

There are a myriad of programs to assist Soldiers and their families. Unfortunately, they go unused because they are unknown. Time on the ground and word of mouth advertising are the two mitigating factors by which people learn of the services available to them. The Army does have guest speakers from these services from time to time, but due to the turnover of Wounded Warriors the speakers rarely hit the same audience twice. So the negative is that there are services to help, but they go unused.

On the positive side however, Soldiers are now being treated in an expedited but thorough means. The days of overworked platoon sergeants, case managers, and PEBLO* counselors are drawing to a close. The system is catching up to its demands, sometimes slowly, sometime by leaps and bounds. Services that assist Soldiers and families, which were once in their infancy both logistically and operationally, are now more streamlined and available.

Below are links to a few publications that
have been produced by the new command structure. Since they are difficult to
find I decided to link to them. Hopefully they will be useful to someone that
has had a need, but has moved on and been unable to receive the quality of care
that I have.